Travel along River Sing Me Home with Eleanor Shearer

Submitted: 25th September 2022

River Sing Me Home travelling locations

A very special journey in this book and one I am eager to share with you. This is a story about a journey of a woman who works and lives on a plantation in Barbados. She has five children – these are the ones to have survived. However, they have been sold to other plantations and she cannot forget their faces

When the law changes in 1834, she and her people are now free. But Rachel’s freedom is about finding her children and that is going to be harder than she could have imagined.

This is a journey through the cane fields of Barbados to the forests of British Guiana and on to Trinidad, to the dangerous river and the open sea.

Only once she knows their stories can she rest.

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Trafalgar Square, Bridgetown, Barbados, 1835. Slavery Images

The capital city of Barbados and the island’s main port, this is where Rachel first flees from her plantation to try and find her children. Bridgetown is next to the ocean, and was a bustling harbour – as the easternmost of the Caribbean islands, it was often the first stop for ships crossing the Atlantic.

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Georgetown, British Guiana – Joshua Bryant, 1824, from John Carter Brown Library

Rachel crosses the ocean to come to British Guiana searching for her two sons who were taken here. It was common during slavery for families to be separated and scattered across the Caribbean. British Guiana is on the coast of South America, and its capital, Georgetown, sits on the mouth of the Demerara River. It was the site of a significant slave rebellion in 1823, which was brutally supressed by the British militia.

BookTrail the locations in River Sing Me Home

Demerara River, British Guiana

Believing one of her sons to be living in the rainforests of British Guiana, Rachel journeys by canoe up the Demerara River. The Demerara is deep brown in colour with a powerful current, teeming with fish and with black caimans that can lurk just below its surface.

BookTrail the locations in River Sing Me Home

Port of Spain, Trinidad

The final stop in Rachel’s journey is Trinidad. Once a Spanish colony, it became British later than other islands like Barbados and was not as densely settled. Port of Spain, its capital, lies at the foot of a mountain range and is bordered by swampland.

What a fascinating yet heartbreaking story and trail. Thank you Eleanor!